7 SECRETS TO WRITING A SUCCESSFUL AD

Written by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta

Whether you're advertising a product on print, radio or Internet, these 7 secrets will help you write and successfully advertise your product:

YOUR HEADLINE OR TITLE PROMISES SOMETHING TO YOUR CONSUMER. Yep, you gotta grab their attention at outset -- that is, by way of your headline. Tell me, would you buy a product after reading this headline: "New Hair Growth Shampoo Now In The Market!" I don't know about you, but if it was something like, "50% Hair Growth In 7 Days!" I'd buy product and try it out to see if it delivers what it promised in headline. It's a more effective headline than first because it gives a concrete result in only a short time. Bald or semi-bald people are more likely to buy product when they read second headline.

A GOOD LEAD FOLLOWS A GOOD HEADLINE. If you've written a very good headline, chances are you'll be able to write a good lead based on that. The key here is to support your headline with facts in your lead as well as elaborate your headline. Another tip: Don't waste words explaining to your readers and target consumers what they already know. Go straight to point. Zero in on your product and what it can do for them. Again, taking our example from hair growth shampoo, don't waste a paragraph explaining causes of baldness. Give them specifics and facts right away such as how effective your hair growth shampoo is as well as tests conducted.

BE CONVINCING BY PROVIDING AMPLE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT. Ask yourself, "What can I say or write here to convince my readers or potential customers to actually buy my product?" List things related to your product and write them in a logical manner. Remember that grabbing their attention from your headline and lead is winning half battle. The next step is for you to convince them to buy your product once you have their complete attention.

TREAT YOUR AD COPY LIKE A NOVEL OR A STORY. If you want sales results, learn how to write and present your advertisement in a logical manner. Treat it as if you're writing a short story or a novel: you have an introduction, you have a conflict, a climax and finally a solution. Make your readers and potential customers feel like ad is really for them. Organize your sales points according to importance: start with most important and then finish off with least.

Attracting Advertisers For Your Site

Written by Todd W. Winslow

So you have a web site and your building traffic, and hopefully you're showing a profit from your own product sales and/or through affiliate programs. Now it's time to look at attracting advertisers who will pay you to run their banners and/or text links on your site (and in your ezine or newsletter, if you have one.)

Know Your Visitors

The first step is to compile demographic information on your site's visitors. This is extremely important information for any potential advertiser, and is important for you in targeting potential advertisers.

There are two simple ways of collecting demographic data on your visitors. You can run a daily or weekly poll, or you can collect this information through subscription process if you have a newsletter or ezine. For example, Listbot allows you to ask demographic information of those subscribing to your ezine/newsletter. Otherwise, simply polling your visitors works too.

Don't try and collect too much information, as most people are unwilling to spend time to fill out a long form or survey, and may be quite hesitant to give too much information. Just concentrate on basics:

Country Gender Age Home Ownership Education Marital Status Children in Household Income

This information will be enough to give potential advertisers a good sense of who visits your site.

Know Your Traffic

Potential advertisers are also going to want to know how many unique visitors your site generates (and subscription base of your ezine/newsletter, if you have one.)

Many hosting companies make available your site's statistics - either as part of your monthly fee or for an additional fee. If they don't provide this service, you can find outside sources such as superstats.com, who offer various packages, depending on what stats you wish to track and how much you're willing to pay.

At very least, you will need to know your monthly unique visitor count for each page of your web site. Most services provide stats on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, and collect much more information than just unique visitors.

Determining Your Price

Now it's time to determine what you'll charge for advertising on your web site (and ezine/newsletter.) I suggest offering three advertising options:

Prime Ad

Standard Ad

Basic Ad

These can pertain to both banners and text link advertisements. Prime ads are large (full color or bold text), and appear at or near top of each page. Standard ads are scaled down versions of prime ads and are generally smaller in size and may or may not have color or bold features, etc. These usually appear somewhere in middle of your page or in a side column. Basic ads are simple text links or very small banners and are normally placed at or near bottom of a page.

In setting your price, you can use a general rule of thumb: $ times number of unique visitors for length or term of ad (ad run). Prime ads: .007 cents, Standard: .006 cents, basic .005 cents.